Month: December 2008

Aren’t lists fun?

It seems like everywhere one turns these days while hurtling down the Internet highway a list can be found. One magazine might feature a list for “Best 50 Cities To Get A Bikini Wax” while another trumpets “Worst 100 Cities To Find A Guy Named Chi Chi.” A reader may begin wondering what is with all the lists? Did I miss some hip trend on the TV news or in the feature section of the newspaper? Is my name Chi Chi and am I wondering just what is a bikini wax? No.

No indeed. Lists are a relatively easy idea for some publication or the other. And we know how much we all love easy. They are fun sometimes though and can be informative.

As for a list I found today on CNN, I am not really sure where it falls. The list is of the 10 healthiest airports published by Health magazine.

When I looked at this list initially I said to myself: “WTF” (What the Fricassee?)This is because airports seem at first glance to be one of the unhealthiest places a person might find themselves. Airports are full of people, often crowded, which may be flying from practically any part of the globe and perhaps carrying every kind of exotic disease known to mankind. Airports are stressful, a heart attack waiting to happen for those who haven’t exercised since Warren G. Harding was president and now is forced to run the mile and a half to the concourse to catch the last flight to Bora Bora.

Nonetheless, Health looked at factors such as airports which contain restaurants serving healthy foods, relaxation zones, and being kid-friendly. Their list named Phoenix Sky Harbor International as No. 1 due to it being a “low-stress experience” for passengers and for serving healthy food such as veggie burritos.

It turns out that I flew in and out, in, or out, of five of the 10 airports. This includes Number 2, Baltimore-Washington International. It said the airport had “soft music and comfortable lighting” at a TSA security checkpoint which is designed to reduce stress. Perhaps I missed that checkpoint.

Chicago O’Hare came in Number 3 being praised for 90 percent of its airports serving “low-fat, fiber-rich, veggie-heavy meals.” The last time I flew to O’Hare was 30 years ago to catch a bus to Great Lakes Naval Station and boot camp. I remember one poor prospective boot being forced to do push-ups in the middle of the airport. Yeah, no stress there. The other healthy airports I have visited were No. 4, 6 and 7 respectively, Detroit, Ronald Reagan Washington National and Dallas Fort Worth International. I was only at Detroit a few minutes. I give National high marks for having a Metro subway station there. And I will say that DF-W has improved in a lot of respects since I first flew there just after it opened 30 years ago.

But healthy? Well, I just can’t vision any of these airports as being healthy. Nevertheless, the top 10 list gave me something to read and write about. And it’s inspired me to do my own top 10 list. Behold the Top 10 Sights One Does Not Want To See While Flying:

1. The ground from a vertical perspective
2. Another plane, up close and personal
3. The Wicked Witch of the West
4. The movie “Alive”
5. The pilot and crew wearing parachutes
6. Flying reindeer
7. Snakes on a plane
8. A mime troupe (I wouldn’t want to see one anywhere, to be honest)
9. A passenger wing-walking
10. Your luggage traveling in the opposite direction

Okay, I just a little bit ago figured out how to upload You Tube videos to my blog. But I haven’t figured out yet how to make my snide remarks along with those videos. So, I will leave those previously published video picture-type thingies to astound and confuse those who stumble upon EFD.

No, actually the raw video from the Family Dollar store happened right here in Beaumont. It has made the national news, you know, 4-year-old boy gets up in the middle of the night. He leaves the house. He walks across a 7-lane highway for at least a quarter-mile. He walks up to the Family Dollar store. Finds Door No. 1 locked. Tries Door No. 2. He walks in the store. Police come to the scene thinking it’s a burglar. The little boy is playing with toys. Hilarity ensues. Well, not really but at least the little kid is okay. The police are investigating the circumstances of his leaving the house but it may just turn out to be just one of those quirky little things young kids do … like …

The next video in which a 5-year-old sneaks off from daycare (yes, this too is in Texas, so what about it?) and goes to Hooters. Maybe he just needed a hot wing fix and maybe … well I won’t go there.

It all just makes me want to ask: What is it with the kids these days?

New consumer price and housing start data for November were released today, and if you can think of those two economic indicators in geographic terms you would say they both “went (way down) South.” I have to point out the Bloomberg piece I am linking is technically incorrect in saying the cost of living dropped 1.7 percent last month. It actually was the consumer price index which sank to a level not seen since the Great Depression. The difference in the two terms explained by the U.S. Department of Labor notes:

“A cost-of-living index measures differences in the price of goods and services, and allows for substitutions to other items as prices change. A consumer price index measures a price change for a constant market basket of goods and services from one period to the next within the same city (or in the Nation). The CPIs are not true cost-of-living indexes and should not be used for place-to-place comparisons.”

Okay, so much for the economics lesson today. The linked article does quite fluently explain the general gist of things, which are certainly less than rosy.

Even if you don’t pay attention to such trends as I am forced to do, you must have seen the correlation. Remember when gasoline was $4 a gallon and milk was somewhat close to that? I may be wrong about milk prices because I don’t drink milk very often. But you see my point. Oil prices high = Higher consumer prices. Oil prices low = Lower consumer prices. And when the equilibrium goes out of whack, timing is everything. Or so someone once said.

What is probably the most disheartening facet of this whole economic funk is that it unlikely to end next year as some elected officials have predicted. A piece on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday pointed out that a couple of so-called “exotic” mortgages are primed to reset which could extend the mortgage crisis for years.

If all of that information isn’t enough to make you want to take to bed for a decade, Scott Pelley’s news story also said similar shenanigans have taken place in the commercial real estate market as happened in the residential market. So not only will we have an extended mortgage crisis for years we face the same with the commercial real estate market.

That is to say, quite crudely, we’re f**ked.